It is fairly well-established in competition cases that the hypothetical counterfactual – which, for the purposes of causation, posits what the situation would have been absent any breach of competition law – cannot contain unlawful elements: see e.g. Albion Water Ltd v Dwr Cymru [2013] CAT 6. In a normal case, C will claim damages, arguing – let’s say – that D abused a dominant position by imposing discriminatory prices. D defends the claim on the basis that, absent any abuse, it would have set prices at a certain (high) level. C replies that those prices too would have been discriminatory – i.e. the counterfactual is inappropriate.
In other words, the legality of the counterfactual normally becomes an issue when the defendant pleads a hypothetical scenario which C alleges to be unlawful. But consider a different situation. In this, D pleads by way of defence that prices would not have been any lower even without the alleged anti-competitive conduct. C replies that that is only the case because D was actually engaging in some separate anti-competitive conduct – about which it has made no complaints in its original claim. Is C entitled to raise this kind of a response to a counterfactual? The answer may well be yes, according to Barling J’s recent judgment in Deutsche Bahn AG and others v MasterCard Incorporation and others [2015] EWHC 3749 (Ch).
The context is the MasterCard litigation, in which various retailers are claiming that the multi-lateral interchange fees (MIFs) charged by MasterCard to banks breached Article 101 TFEU and caused them loss. Specifically, the MIFs inflated the charges (MSCs) that banks imposed on merchants in connection with processing MasterCard payments and distorted competition in that market.
One line of defence which MasterCard has adopted is that the MIFs did not have any material effect on some categories of MSCs. MasterCard specifically points to a period when the MIFs were set at zero and there was no consequent deflation in MSCs. The retailers riposted by pleading in their Reply that that was only because MasterCard was operating another different rule which was also anti-competitive (the “Central Acquiring Rule” or “CAR”) – absent this too, the Claimants say, MSCs would have fallen. The retailers had originally made no complaint about the CAR in their Particulars of Claim.
Not only this, but the retailers relied on their pleaded case on the CAR in their Reply to support an argument that they should be entitled to amend their Particulars to raise the CAR as a fresh and independent claim. Even though the CAR claim was arguably or partially time-barred, the fact that it appeared in the Reply meant that it “arose out of the same facts” as the original claim under CPR 17.4(2). The application to amend was the issue before Barling J. He granted it, accepting that it was an ‘arguable’ point which the Claimants were entitled to run in their Reply, that evidence on the CAR would therefore be needed, and that they could therefore also add it as a new claim under CPR 17.4(2).
There are perhaps three interesting points arising from the decision. The first is that it raises the prospect that in responding to a counterfactual, C can do more than simply say that the hypothetical conduct on which D relies is illegal. C can arguably go further – and claim that some other aspect of D’s actual conduct – not previously in issue – is also illegal and so must be purged from the counterfactual. This represents a departure from the kind of arguments run in Albion Water and Enron Coal Services Ltd v EW&S Railway Ltd [2009] CAT 36 – as Barling J himself recognized (§72) – although there are closer similarities with C’s argument in Normans Bay Ltd v Coudert Brothers [2004] EWCA Civ 215.
The second is that that kind of argument can seemingly be raised even though the conduct complained of is not specifically raised in the Defence. MasterCard had not pleaded that MSCs were not affected by the MIFs because of the CAR. But that did not prevent the retailers from raising the legality of the CAR in response to the counterfactual. The situation was therefore unlike that in the Norman Bay case – where D had pleaded in its counterfactual conduct which C claimed was itself negligent in its Reply.
The third is that the allegation of unlawfulness that C raises in its Reply may even be time-barred. And, if it is, the plea may allow C to argue that it should be able to amend its Particulars so as to include the substantive new claim on the basis that it is one which arises out of facts already in issue under CPR 17.4(2). Barling J rejected MasterCard’s submission that this was to allow the retailers to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The retailers therefore succeeded in bringing a new claim into their Particulars through the “back door” of their Reply.
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